Stacia Kane: Unholy Ghosts

She saw Terrible, his lips moving, but no sound reached her. All she heard were the whispers, words she didn’t recognize but understood. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead of her voice what came out was shiny and red, a satin ribbon of air curling into the thick darkness around her. She could give in and it would all be over. All the pain, the misery, all of the memories, gone. What she’d been trying to achieve over the years with pills and powders and hard knobs of Dream, she could have it now, she could cease to exist and find the oblivion she couldn’t find in life.

She reached for it. Her fingers closed around something cold and hard, something that cut into her palm with its sharp fierce edge.

Fire shot up her arm. Her blood had activated the metal, fed it, whatever it had done, but the cold blackness turned to heat, unbearable blue-white heat.

Through the haze of agony she felt hands circle her ankles and tug. She’d started to let go of the coin, but now she grabbed it again, squeezing harder, the pain a blessing that kept her conscious in the seconds before Terrible yanked her out of the circle.

Her vision returned in a rush, going from nothing to a confused series of images that failed to imprint themselves on her brain. Terrible hoisted her up over his shoulder and ran across the field while her hand burned and her stomach protested. A sharp piece of chain link scratched her cheek when he dove through the hole in the fence; she almost fell as he wrenched the car door open and practically threw her into it.

Music blared and gravel spewed behind them as he tore out of the parking lot. Chess looked down into her clenched fist. Blood dripped through her fingers onto her black jeans, soaking through them. In her hand was a copper amulet.

Her skin crawled just touching the thing, but she wanted to try and see if she could make out anything of the complex pattern around the edge. Runes, maybe? They weren’t supposed to memorize the runes—part of their power lay in the concentration it took to copy them—but it was impossible not to recall some of them, and a few of these symbols were familiar. The rest could have been invented, placeholders to confuse the curious or those unlucky enough to stumble across the copper piece, but somehow she didn’t think so. The amulet was too powerful for that, and there were many magical alphabets Church employees were forbidden to learn.

Edsel might know, but she couldn’t go to him until Sunday. Tomorrow was Saturday, Holy Day, and she’d need to be at Church for most of it.

She tucked the coin in her black box on the bookcase and said a few words of power, hoping it would be enough. Usually magic’s edge of unpredictability fascinated her, but it didn’t seem so much fun when it came to items like these. Who knew what energies might be manifesting in the amulet, how they might affect her and her home?

“Okay,” she said, turning. “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Aye, looks like it.” Terrible peeled the thin towel away from the wound on his arm and inspected it. “I be right, Chess. Ain’t you worry.”

“Let me see.” The bleeding had stopped, but the gouge in his skin from where the fence had caught him, too, looked deep and ugly. He’d saved her life. The least she owed him was some antiseptic.

An almost-full bottle of it rested in her bathroom cabinet. The sharp medicinal scent stung her nose as she soaked a clean cloth with it and pressed it against his wound. His arm twitched but did not move as she finished cleaning it and put a fresh pad over it, taping it into place.

“Sorry about the pain.”

He shrugged. “Had much worse.”

Which reminded her. She crossed back into her small, dingy kitchen and grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the fridge, then another for Terrible.

Awkward silence descended as they sat and sipped their water.

But what was she supposed to talk about with him? She barely knew him. Nobody really knew him. Nobody really wanted to. Better to run when they saw him coming.

He cleared his throat, gulped his water, cleared his throat. “Nice place.”

“Thanks.” It wasn’t, really. It was bare, and plain, and dull, except for the enormous stained-glass window taking up one entire wall. But if she’d been forced to spend most of her time in the gynecological horror chamber that was Bump’s place, she probably would have thought it was nice, too.

“So what you think, Chess? You think Chester haunted?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d like to look at it during the day.”

“On the morrow?”

“I have church. Saturday.”

“Right. You not there they miss you, aye?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded slowly and got up, taking his water with him. “I talk to Bump, give him what happened. Come to his place on the early. He’ll front you.”

“Thanks.”

Sleep was out of the question when he left. Looked like she’d be pulling an all-nighter whether she wanted to or not. She shrugged and started chopping out another line. Might as well enjoy herself, watch some movies, dye her hair—her reddish roots were starting to show under the black—before Church in the morning.

Normally she arrived at church before the Reckonings started, in order to avoid having to watch. This morning she’d been busy organizing her CDs, so citizens with bags of ripe fruit and sticks greeted her when she finally stepped onto Church property at five to nine.

They weren’t looking at her. They barely even noticed her, but she still felt exposed, as if they were all watching her from the corners of their eyes, waiting for her to turn her back so they could curse her and beat her. It was hard to remember sometimes that they wouldn’t, that that part of her life had ended the day she entered the Church training program.

Two Minor Elders led the first Penitent into the square, a large man with a heavy beard. His bare, dusty feet shuffled across the pavement toward the stocks, but the look on his face belied his body’s reluctance. He couldn’t wait to be abused, couldn’t wait to be cleansed by filth. Easy answers made everyone happy. Idly she wondered what he’d done. Broken an oath, told a lie? An information crime, perhaps? He didn’t wear the gloves of a thief, so she guessed his infraction was a moral one; adultery, or lying, perhaps.

Chess didn’t stop, crossing the square past the enormous stone 1997 Haunted Week memorial, remembering as always to dip her head in respect for the millions worldwide whose lives had been stolen.

She didn’t remember Haunted Week herself, she’d been only an infant. She only knew the ghosts hadn’t taken her own parents, whoever they were—or rather, that their death wasn’t the reason she was in the system. They’d given her up already. But the story of Haunted Week she knew, of course she knew, as everyone did. She could only imagine what it must have been like, people huddled together in churches and homes and schools, praying and crying, while silent ghosts, risen from their graves, moved through the walls in search of them. Stealing their lives. Armed with knives and broken glass, armed with ropes and hatchets and razors, their blank faces impassive as they killed.

She wasn’t the only one who saw the Church as her salvation, despite the few grumpy splinter groups who attempted to rebel in their small, largely useless ways. All of humanity—all that remained, a third of what the population had been before that fateful week—owed their lives to the only group, the only religion, that had been able to control and defeat the ghosts. Before Haunted Week—before the Church showed the world what Truth was—they’d been a tiny group, devoted to the theory and study of magic. Now they ran the world.